The emerging signalling effect of a hybrid organizational and business model. Do Benefit Companies obtain more external finance?

The study aims to analyse the ability of hybrid organizational and business models to improve the access to the external finance. In detail and based on the signalling theory, it has been hypothesized that firms adopting a growing form of hybrid organizational model, i.e. the Benefit Company, can potentially obtain more external finance in form of debt by signalling to investors their status of CSR oriented firm. The findings from a sample of 954 Italian companies analysed in the period 2009–2018 show that the adoption of the Benefit Company's model has a positive effect only on the overall availability of finance, while the rate of short-debt seems to be not affected by the adoption of the analysed hybrid-organizational model.